


Tardigrade Out Of Control!

by Measured_Words



Category: Tardigrade Song - Cosmo Sheldrake (Song)
Genre: Aliens, Exploration, Homecoming, Implied Parthenogenesis, Other, Schmoop, Tardigrades in Space
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-28
Updated: 2016-05-28
Packaged: 2018-07-10 16:25:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,426
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6995047
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Measured_Words/pseuds/Measured_Words
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>True Tardigrade Facts:</p><p>Tardigrades, also known as water bears or moss piglets, are adorable<br/>Tardigrades can survive in extreme conditions by entering a type of stasis<br/>Tardigrades live in and around water<br/>Some tardigrades reproduce via parthenogenesis</p><p>Some tardigrades have been to outer space!</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tardigrade Out Of Control!

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Sath](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sath/gifts).



> Possibly influenced a bit by some of your other requests.... I hope you enjoy it :)

"I think you're very brave," she'd said. That's the thought that stuck with me, like static. I wonder how long it will have been when I get back – what she might be doing, whether I can find her again, and whether I'd even recognize her with a new moult. 

Eventually I realize that these thoughts mean I'm coming out of stasis. It still takes a bit for me to process the rest of the implication: we've succeeded! I'm one of the first tardigrades who's been to outer space, and I'm coming back alive.

The water I've found is very cold. This doesn’t bother me – space must have been much colder. I'm not sure where I am, but maybe somewhere in the upper atmosphere still? I'm falling. Am I caught in some rain? Where will it put me down?

I don't feel very brave, just sort of listless. I'm still pretty dried up, and everything feels tight and uncomfortable. I'd give just about anything to be back in my cozy little patch of moss, all snuggled up with my girl. We could have a drink and I'd tell her all about... 

Hmm.

I should have stayed in stasis the whole time. That's how we survive – we dry out until we have no more water in us, and then we can handle just about anything: cold, heat, pressure. We're pretty hardy! That's why we thought we could make it in outer space. As for why – who hasn't wondered what's up there? The world is huge, and everything beyond it is pretty much unfathomable, especially at my scale. Poking around seemed like it could be a spot of fun.

Curiosity was something we never really shared, so she never understood why I'd want to leave our little scrap of moss at all, let alone to go so very far away. Back then I couldn't understand why she could be so complacent, but I've had enough adventure now. I just want to go home!

There are things out there in space.

Humans have been poking around at space for a long time, and they think they know what they're looking for. But space is so big that it's easy to miss things that are very very small – the scale is wrong for them, but for the tardigrade contingent it was just perfect. I'm not sure what they thought was happening, why they couldn't seem to keep accurate population counts. They came up with some pretty funny theories about our breeding habits! But really, it's just that sometimes we weren't there, and other times we had visitors.

The visitors are hard to describe, and not really nice to think about. They live in the spaces between...space and time I guess? The fourth dimension, maybe? Or the fifth? I'm not really sure – maybe it was even weirder than living in the space between space. When they try to come here they get all stretched out and weird. In their own place – of course I went to see, I told you, we're very hardy and I was curious – they're a lot more small and shiny. Light doesn’t work how we think it should there, so everything sort of gleamed around the edges, like it was breaking in through cracks. It was hard to communicate with them. Even if they could make words, the meanings didn't make enough sense to them for them to use them right. I'm not actually sure they had to be as small as they were, or if they just were more interested in us than in the humans and their technology.

I think they wanted to be able to come here, but our world is too hard for them to stay in too long. They needed something to make them tougher. 

Not everyone survived our interactions with the visitors; I think maybe that's enough said about that.

It wasn't all bad aliens though! There were some much friendlier microorganisms that we encountered, clinging to bigger particles in a cloud of space dust. I almost wondered if we could be related – on a species level, not personally, I mean. They were smaller, for one thing, but they had a similar kind of stasis. They were very excited to hear how much water was on Earth too! But as much as they were very friendly and inviting, they were maybe a little too single-minded about it – you know how some species are, especially the ones that aren't very evolved. Almost all they could think about was reproduction, and they were very committed to their own practices. 

It made me homesick, I suppose, thinking about home, quiet days swimming around together between moults, and one or the other of us deciding when we wanted to reproduce on our own terms. It's much nicer, I think, to be in control of those functions for yourself, so that then you can decide to be with someone just because you like them, not because you need someone to fulfill your biological imperatives. Parthenogenesis is the way forward, I think.

I'm still falling, but I can sense the big water coming. I know it probably isn't my water, though. Outer space is hard for anyone to grasp, but for a tardigrade the planet's on a pretty unfathomable scale too. I'm starting to get worried – how will I ever get home? What if I don't make it? What if I swim and search for so long that she forgets all about me? What if I forget?

The water I land in is much warmer than the rain, and it distracts me a bit with how hungry I am for normal Earth things. I want some moss, or some nematodes, or something to get the taste of visitors and space dust travellers out of my mouth. I want a shot of whiskey and to never leave home again.

I feel the bigger splash of the spaceship hitting the water too, and I try not to get pushed too far away. The humans have been checking on us the whole way, and I hope they're planning to see it through. Some of my fellow explorers are nearby, and I can see them shaking off their stasis too, and trying to ride out the waves. As much as I like water, the ocean is feeling way too large for me. I'm too low on the food chain for a place like this. When I first started this mission that would have seemed a cool challenge, but I don't know that I have the energy to fight off anything bigger than a sea monkey. 

There's more waves now, and the roar of a motor, and we're being sucked up into a tube... we wind up in a tank, water sloshing all around. Everyone who's here seems to be doing okay, at least. We take a roll, only to have it get all confused when more water sloshes in, but it looks like it's just the scientists rounding us all up. We have some kind of mark, or tag, that lets them keep track of us, even though we're tiny. Even so – it doesn't look like we're all coming back, even the ones who made it to the atmosphere. But maybe they just weren't ready. I know some of us wanted more adventure, and the ocean can offer that as surely as outer space. It's a little easier to think of it that way. We all knew going in that not all of us would be coming back, but no one ever thinks it will be them... I didn't. I got lucky, but now that I'm so close to being home again, it doesn't seem brave, no matter what she said.

They take us back to the lab – so close now! And they run some more tests, because they're humans, and that's what they do. But now it is just a matter of time – I can see home from here, and wave, and like to think she's waving back at me, even if she's way too small to see. Tonight, I hope, they'll put us back in the aquarium with the control group, and I'll swim around until I see her again, and she can tell me how quiet and calm everything has been, and I can tell her – well, the nice stories, anyway. And maybe when they're done with the project the humans will take us back to the lake, and we can live there together, and not have anything grander to explore than some new moss, and each other.


End file.
